


Burial

by iammemyself



Series: Arkhamverse [28]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, Batman: Arkham (Video Games), Batman: Arkham - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-10
Updated: 2021-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-17 12:20:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29966268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iammemyself/pseuds/iammemyself
Summary: He knew better than to go to his father’s funeral, but he did it anyway.
Relationships: Jonathan Crane/Edward Nygma
Series: Arkhamverse [28]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/647603
Kudos: 15





	Burial

**‘Burial’**

**By Indiana**

**Characters: Edward Nygma, Jonathan Crane [Scriddler]**

**Synopsis: He knew better than to go to his father’s funeral, but he did it anyway.**

-

It was sunny.

It shouldn’t have been, in Edward’s opinion. It should have been pouring down rain, should have discouraged half these people from showing up and encouraged the other half to finish up and get inside as quickly as possible. But it was sunny, and the sky was clear, and there were around thirty people here gathered to mourn the death of Edward’s father.

He had known about them, of course. Had known about his father’s new wife and new sons. One the age he had been when his mother had left, and the other the age he had been when his father had first hit him. They were crying not because he had been terrible to them and they were thankful that he was gone, but because they missed him and wanted him to come back. All of these people, his family and his friends, felt that way. They didn’t know because he had hidden it from them.

_No one will ever mourn me like this._

It was sickening. The priest was making a grand speech about what a great man and benefit to the community his father had been, and people were eating up the lie and shedding tears over it. He’d been a _bartender_ , for God’s sake. Some of these people were just _regulars_. Slinging booze was considered a ‘benefit to the community’ now? To what community? Alcoholics? Lonely men who had no better place to go? Single women looking for free drinks?

It seemed to take the entire afternoon for them to get all the ceremony over with and put him in his hole in the ground. When they finally did so, the feeling Edward had expected and been waiting for did not come. Instead he felt hollow, suddenly, as though something important had been taken from him. It hadn’t been, of course. He was glad that old man was finally dead. It had _taken_ long enough.

It was his aim to have disappeared before anyone spotted him, but it seemed he had lingered too long because his father’s widow caught sight of him as people filtered along their way. She looked as though she had seen a ghost, and Edward supposed that she had. He turned and pushed his hands deeper into his pants pockets and did his best to pretend he was there for some other reason. He was in the parking lot, shouting distance from his vehicular exit, when someone called a name he was not yet used to hearing: “Édouard!”

He stopped without meaning to. The clack of high heels sounded across the asphalt but it was too late to pretend he hadn’t heard. He was going to have to see what she wanted and extricate himself as soon as possible.

“You must be him,” the woman said in French, short of breath. She had an accent he didn’t recognise. “He said you might show up. You look just like him, you know, like – “

“What do you want?” Edward snapped as he turned to face her, his enunciation still perfect Québécois. She looked taken aback, as though she had not expected him to be so aggressive. Or maybe seeing the near-exact facsimile of her late husband’s face on someone else was much more shocking up close. She looked down towards the purse hanging from her shoulder, digging in it with one hand. She withdrew and held out to him an envelope which stole the breath from his lungs and replaced it with a nearly sickening tension. All that was written upon the face was ‘Édouard’ in small black letters. He stared at it.

“What did he tell you about me?” he demanded.

“Nothing,” she answered. “Just that… someone I wouldn’t know might show up, and I was to give this to him.”

He accepted it, turning it over as he did so. It was sealed with no signs of tampering. 

“Who are you?” the woman asked. Edward looked over the top of his glasses at her.

“Someone your late husband didn’t see fit to tell you about,” he answered, and resumed walking across the parking lot. Once seated behind his steering wheel he put the envelope down on the passenger seat and pushed the key into the ignition.

He shouldn’t open it. He should just get rid of it. It wasn’t going to say anything important. It wasn’t going to say anything he needed to read.

He couldn’t fit his finger beneath the corner of the flap with the glove on, so he took it off and laid it on the dashboard. He slowly worked the envelope open with one finger.

He shouldn’t. He wasn’t going to. He leaned over and opened the glovebox and removed the lighter that was in there. He lit it and held it to the bottom corner. Not close enough. He felt sick suddenly. He wasn’t going to be able to do it. He put the lighter down and leaned the envelope on the steering wheel and stared at his name. His father had written it there. His father had not tried to talk to him in such a long time. He had to know. He couldn’t not know.

_Édouard_

_I suspect you will make an appearance at my funeral to make sure I am truly dead. I trust you did not cause trouble for the invited attendees. I think we can both agree that would be sinking rather low, even for you._

_I am sure you will be relieved of the fact that you will no longer need to keep an eye on me and my doings. We both know they were none of your business and yet you made them so anyway. One would think you would divert your attention onto more suitable things with time, but age has not brought you any wisdom that I can tell. From what I have seen of you on the news you seem content to revel in your strange sickness instead. It is a shame to think upon all the things you could have been doing, but elected against in favour of… whatever that persona of yours is supposed to be._

_I do not know why you did not kill me as so many of your ilk often do, but when I heard news of your disappearance I had hope you were moving away from the man you have become. My actions may have had influence in your decisions, but they were always_ your decisions _. Perhaps my death will finally free you to realise that._

_I do not have much confidence left in your ability to make the right choices, but at least the time remains for you to make them. I hope that you do for your own sake._

_Dad_

Edward pressed his forehead to the steering wheel and cried.

He didn’t know why he was crying, or who he was crying for. Perhaps for himself and the life that could have been. Perhaps because, as awful as the man had been, he was still Edward’s father. Or perhaps it was the not knowing if, had he known what Edward was doing now, he would have found it in him to be proud despite everything. When he was able he removed his handkerchief from his jacket pocket and cleaned his glasses with it, then his face. The letter he tossed back onto the other seat, followed by the envelope. He sat, leaned back in his chair, for a long time. When he realised what colour the sky was he blinked and turned the key. He’d been here too long. Even if he had only been here for as many minutes as it had taken him to park in the first place, that would have been here too long. His father didn’t deserve this much of his time, not alive and especially not dead.

The letter seemed to have been imbued with his aura, and Edward knew that was stupid but he could feel it. It was there. Just like that hollowness that shouldn’t be. 

He shouldn’t have opened it. He shouldn’t have gone. He shouldn’t have.

//

When he got home some hours later and Jonathan asked how it had gone, Edward wordlessly put the letter into his hand and went upstairs. He stood in the shower for a very long time. Waiting. He didn’t know for what. He just felt as though he should stay there until something happened. Something that would tell him that the world hadn’t really changed that much even when he felt as though it had been upended completely.

Eventually he got out and went into the bedroom to get dressed, finding that Jonathan was in bed. He had been in the shower longer than he had thought. His hair was soaking his back because he had forgotten to dry it with a towel.

“If Google Translate is to be believed,” Jonathan said, “this is quite the letter.”

Edward sat down, shirtless, and took it to be put away in his bedside drawer. Jonathan looked at him but Edward did not have any words to give him. He didn’t have anything except a profound empty feeling he did not think anything would ever fill. He lay down, back to Jonathan, and pulled up the blanket. He wondered if it would ever go away. He wondered if it was a scar or a reminder.

“You have no way of knowing what it means,” Jonathan continued. “It could simply be a – “

“Shut up, Jonathan,” Edward said.

“Edward, I only – “

“He was my father and I’ll mourn him the way I want to.”

“… _mourn_ him?” Jonathan repeated, his words overflowing with all the incredulity he could summon, and Edward got up to sleep on the couch.

//

It was sunny again today, too, the headstone now half-hidden behind flowers and little stuffed animals and a photograph depicting a family that was and was not Edward’s both at the same time. He had been on his knees there for a while. He should not have come today, either, but he had the right to make some sort of farewell speech too, didn’t he? Didn’t he have the _most_ right to that out of _anyone_? The people in that picture hadn’t _known_ his father. How many times had he sat there on the couch with his arm behind her shoulders, reaching for the means to change the channel if ever Edward appeared on the TV? Had his sons ever dragged their feet on the way home from school in the hopes of arriving after he had already left for work? Had he been good to them always, or had he done one unexplainedly kind thing now and again which only served to be utterly confusing in the face of the constant cruelty? Even if he had changed, had genuinely, honestly become a better man for them, it didn’t matter. It wasn’t fair. He was chewing his lower lip and trying to shove the rage in his chest back down with deliberate, heavy breaths. “I never killed you,” Edward murmured, “because it would have proven that might makes right.”

The smile his father wore in the photograph seemed to burn the corner of his vision that it occupied.

“If I had killed you, you would have won. But I suppose you won anyway because I will never have what you had. Unlike you, I can’t bury what I’ve done and have family and friends surround me in death, oblivious to the whole of the person I was. You have a lot of gall lecturing _me_ about _choices_ when you chose every day to pretend to your new family that I didn’t exist. That I _don’t_ exist.” There was a handful of fresh grass in between his gloved fingers. “Well, I’m not going to tell you what I’m doing now. You don’t deserve to know. I no longer need your pride.” Saying it out loud made him feel as though he had the ability to make it true. “All those final fucking words to me and you couldn’t be bothered to use a single one of them to apologise. All I hope comes of your death is that I wake up one morning soon with the feeling I _should_ have had all this time: _relief_.”

He stood up and turned around to find that his father’s widow was standing behind him, her teary eyes wide. He wanted to ruin it for her. He wanted to tell her in explicit detail who he was and what his father’s contributions had been towards making him that way. He wanted her tears to be of horror as he told her that the man she had loved and borne children for and built a life alongside had lied to her in order to con himself a second chance he had not deserved. All the words were tumbling through his mind, ordering themselves into the perfect sentences that would shatter her illusions and put the truth and meaning of her entire life into question. One inhale would fill his lungs with them and one exhale would breathe all of them out into a torrent that she would not believe at first, but that would form infinite niggling doubts in her mind. Eating away at her. Leading her to look into who Edward was. Into uncovering a truth she would not be able to hide from her children as her husband so easily had. One breath and he could do all of that.

So he took two.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” he said.

//

Jonathan was at the kitchen table drinking coffee. He was wearing the same clothes as yesterday and his hair had been half-combed with his fingers. If by some wild circumstance Edward died first, Jonathan would not cry for him. He would not hold a funeral or spend too much time thinking about interpersonal regrets. He would simply remember Edward for what he had been. All of it.

He sat down at the table.

“That other phone has been ringing all day,” Jonathan said into his coffee, his other hand keeping his book spread open. “I think she knows and wants a chance to head you off before you do something rash.”

Edward rubbed at a dried spot of coffee with his thumb. It came off, but he would still have to wash the table. “I’m not going to do anything rash.”

“What _are_ you going to do?”

The emptiness remained, but no solution had presented itself. “Nothing.”

When Jonathan put his empty cup down, Edward stood and brought it to the sink. “I didn’t know when you’d be returning so supper is in the fridge,” Jonathan said. He nodded but did not feel the slightest inclination to go looking for it. He would go see what she wanted, and after a shower he was going to bed. A thought gave him pause when he had one foot on the stairs. “Jonathan.”

“Mm,” said Jonathan. Edward couldn’t tell how his attention was divided between himself and the book.

“If… I died tomorrow, would you cry for me?”

Jonathan’s browline indicated he didn’t understand the question. “Of course I would.”

Edward’s fingers scrunched up and down the side of the bannister. “Just a little.”

“Enough,” Jonathan said.

“Don’t do anything else.”

“I wasn’t planning on it.”

Edward nodded and continued upstairs.

The phone was still ringing. He sat down in his desk chair and pushed his earpiece in and answered it. It had better be something that could wait because he was too tired to work right now. He had not slept much last night.

“There you are,” said Barbara.

“What do you want,” Edward said.

“We heard what happened,” Barbara answered. “We’ve rearranged some availability. You’ve got two weeks off.”

He sat up straight. “I don’t – “

“I knew you’d say that,” Barbara interrupted. “Look. I know you didn’t like your dad. But you went to his funeral. Even if you don’t want time to work that out, I’m giving it to you anyway. I don’t care what you do with it. Just take it.”

Edward stared at the wall until he remembered he had to respond to that. “I’m not going to do anything.”

“If I thought you would,” Barbara said, “we wouldn’t be talking right now. I’m just trying to be nice. Okay?”

“Thanks, Barbara,” he murmured, and she told him goodbye and hung up.

When Jonathan came upstairs he was still in his office, having gotten distracted by a spate of messages he’d received since last he’d checked them. The most distressing of them all he had left for last, and was still staring at it as Jonathan stood behind him. “She sent you a friend request,” he said after a minute. Hearing it said out loud didn’t help his indecision.

“What should I do?”

Jonathan leaned on the chair and Edward heard the clink of him pushing up his glasses. “She thinks she wants to know,” he answered finally. “But she doesn’t.”

Edward nodded and deleted the request. “They cleared my schedule for the next two weeks,” he said, rotating the chair ninety degrees to the left. “If there was anything you wanted to do.”

Jonathan frowned at the desk. “We should go camping,” he said. Edward was a little taken aback.

“Camping?”

“Yes,” Jonathan said, standing up straight again.

“I’ve never gone before.”

“Me neither,” said Jonathan, “but things are so easy nowadays an idiot could probably figure it out.”

Edward tapped one finger on the desk. “I’ll have to figure out what we’ll need, but… sure. Let’s go camping.”

“Are you coming to bed?”

He shook his head. “I need to shower.”

“Hurry up,” Jonathan said. “You know how you get when it’s past your bedtime.”

He wished he had a response to that, but… he was right.

//

He was ready about an hour later, which was cutting it close, and at Jonathan’s behest Edward lay held to his right side with one thin arm. The hollowness was still achingly present and he stared at the barely visible curtains shielding the windows.

“Don’t mourn him, Eddie,” Jonathan murmured. He always somehow knew what Edward was thinking. “Mourn the part of yourself he took from you.”

“I don’t _want_ to,” said Edward. Jonathan’s long fingers were in his hair.

“I understand,” Jonathan said. “Your mind needs some time to accept that it’s finally over.”

That thought was… terrifying. He had spent so many years harbouring so much anger and frustration and resentment and now the cause of it was gone. Forever. The emptiness seemed to increase and the arm he had across Jonathan’s stomach tightened against it.

“When we go camping,” Jonathan continued as though he hadn’t noticed, “might I use the letter as kindling?”

“You know how to start a fire?”

“Oh yes,” Jonathan answered, scratching his nose with his free hand. “I used to do it with a knife and a rock. It’s extremely sexy, I assure you.”

“Can you still do it?” Edward asked, fascinated by this new development. Jonathan shrugged.

“You should probably bring some matches just in case. My hands aren’t as steady as they once were.”

Edward gave a pat to the place his palm currently rested, which was still Jonathan’s stomach. “We wouldn’t want you cutting yourself open.”

Jonathan slid his fingers between Edward’s. “That’s what the first aid kit you’ll be bringing is for.”

“Burn it,” Edward said after there had been silence between them for a minute. The gentle squeeze Jonathan gave to his shoulder may have caused the emptiness to fade, just a little bit.

“If you choose to change your mind, you can.”

“No. Don’t let me.”

There were a lot of things his father had had that Edward never would. But he had never had Edward himself, and once enough time had passed he would be able to appreciate and understand that had always been to his own benefit. For now he would wait and try to think about other things. More important things. Like Jonathan’s endlessly cold feet pressed against his shins. “Did you pull up my pantlegs with your toes again?” he demanded.

“I think they were already like that.”

“I don’t think so,” Edward said, attempting to yank them back down with his own toes, but Jonathan’s feet were simply too large for him to be successful. He crossed his arms and sighed through his nose and Jonathan laughed.

“Go to sleep and you won’t even notice.”

“I’m supposed to fall asleep with your gigantic icy feet crammed up my pants?”

“You’ve actually proven yourself to be quite good at it,” Jonathan said with gentle amusement, and even though it wasn’t _really_ a compliment it still took the edge off his annoyance. He settled himself into Jonathan’s side again and Jonathan pressed his dry lips into Edward’s brow. “Don’t go running off in the morning,” he murmured there. “Having me worry about you three days in a row would be going too far.”

“It may turn out that you’ll _wish_ I’d left.”

“Maybe,” Jonathan said. “Or maybe I don’t mind helping you as much as you think I do.”

He would ask Jonathan about the emptiness tomorrow. He must know some way of dealing with it, or what it meant. He found himself smiling a little.

“He wrote me the letter because he didn’t know I had you,” he said, and Jonathan laughed through his nose and slid his hand up and down Edward’s arm.

“Good,” was all he said, and without asking he knew that in Jonathan’s opinion Edward had won after all. It was an opinion he fully intended to share one day. 


End file.
